Kao Gong Ji : The World's Oldest Encyclopaedia of Technologies

Kao Gong Ji: The World's Oldest Encyclopaedia of Technologies by Guan Zengjian and Konrad Herrmann offers an English translation of China's first technological encyclopaedia. Commentaries show the extent to which the descriptions of the technologies correspond to archaeological findings.

Among the civilisations of the world, China is so far unequaled, since it is the only civilisation that can look back on a continuous tradition of 5,000 years. It has, accordingly, acquired a rich body of written culture, much of which remains untranslated and therefore unknown in the West.

The "Kao Gong Ji" is the oldest book on technology known in China. Excerpts with technological content appeared only later in philosophical, mathematical or historiographic works. Because its largest part probably originated in the era between the Chunqiu (770-476 BCE) and the Zhanguo period (475-221 BCE) about 2,500 years ago, "Kao Gong Ji" is also the oldest surviving technological work in the world. Written sources on science and technology that are roughly comparable include the works, from a later moment in time, of the Greek mathematician, physicist and engineer Archimedes (287-212 BCE).

Due to "Kao Gong Ji's" pre-eminent significance for the technologies developed in China, we have decided to present this book to a worldwide audience of readers interested in the history of science and technology, and to offer three translations: modern Chinese and, for the first time, English and German.


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